Search

This paper presents partial results of a broader investigation and focuses on describing a process of reification that took place at the heart of an immigrant community in Sant Mateu (Castelló, Spain), and that crystallised through the construction and management of a mosque. The theoretical framework draws on social learning theories, with a particular focus on situated learning and communities of practice. Regarding the method, the study follows an ethnographic, qualitative approach. We present the fieldwork procedures (participatory observation, interviews and focus groups) and analytical procedures (content analysis) followed in the research. The results recount the process this immigrant community followed to build the mosque, and the meanings for the community of the process followed and its culmination. Finally, the discussion and conclusions characterise this immigrant community as a community of practice where situated learning processes arise.

In the Maghreb, the struggle for independence was the starting point for a new relationship between people and institutions. Three different ways of developing a new state--in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco--are the result of a new social and political landscape that is being designed in the Mediterranean basin: from a monarchy in Morocco legitimised by religion, to a liberal republic in Tunisia and a socialist-populist regime in Algeria. During the 1970s and 1980s, both the internal and the international situation forced these countries to confront the difficulties of economical and political central control. The lack of liberties, the economic crisis, the fight for power among the political and social forces inside these countries, and the Western Saharan conflict limited the development of the area. Two decades after independence, in the 1990s, we witness a political, cultural, economic and social crisis considered by scholars to be the catalyst of social processes such as the rise of Islamic fundamentalism or migration to Europe. The civil war in Algeria and the fight against Islamic terrorism are alibis for the authoritarian policies implemented by these regimes. Nowadays, limits on civil jobs, control of the Islamic presence in the political arena and new economic adjustment programmes related to European Union policy in the area, are all attempts to solve the critical situation. (Contains 8 tables and 1 note.)

This paper shows how Koranic Law was enshrined in the Moroccan Family Code (the "Mudawwana") in its first draft between the years 1957 and 1958. The changes that were included in 1993 and especially in 2004 partially modify the philosophy of Islamic resources and give more freedom of action to women. At present, the "Mudawwana Code"--as well as the Tunisian "Madjala Code" from 1956--displays a substantially different content from the rest of the family codes of the Muslim-Arab World. Morocco appears to have taken a clear position regarding the duty of the modern state to uphold equal citizenship, but nonetheless maintains--with rather weak arguments--a polygamous marriage that perpetuates women's subordination to men. (Contains 4 notes.)

Taking cue from Abdelahad Sebti's study of the social history of the zaṭāṭ (زطَا طَ) (the escort who in precolonial Morocco was hired to protect travellers from highway robbers and thieves), this paper attempts, in the words of Edward Said (1996. Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures. New York: Vintage Books, XV), a 'coherent description' of the vocation of the Moroccan intellectual in a public sphere characterised by a crisis in hegemony and public distrust of institutional politics. I argue that the Moroccan intellectual tends to avoid engagement with radical politics that aim to create social disorder (al-siba) or unrest (fitna), and embraces instead hybrid approaches that alternate resilience and resistance, dissent and compromise, critique of the a'mma (the general public) and state politics, and advocacy for endogenous 'reforms from within' over drastic social change. In this, the intellectual emulates the role of the zaṭāṭ in that they see their function as a road architect, social navigation engineer, and a link in a plural and contesting social and political organisation. The paper uses the hirak movement in northern Morocco as a case study to illustrate the role of the intellectual as a mediator of social contention. While there are different ways to 'speak the truth to power', confrontation has been the least favoured style of the Moroccan intellectual who has generally conceived of their role as a facilitator of social peace rather than an instigator of revolt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the impact of international migration on the transfer of political and social norms. Exploiting recent and unique data on Morocco, this paper explores whether households with return and current migrants bear different political preferences and behaviours than non-migrant families. Once controlling for the double selection into emigration and return migration, the findings suggest that having a returnee in the household increases the demand for political and social change. This result is driven by returnees mostly from Western European countries, who were exposed to more democratic norms in the destination. However, we find a negative impact of having a current migrant on the willingness of the left-behind households to change. This result is driven by migrants to non-Western countries, where the quality of political and social institutions is lower. Our results are robust to also controlling for destination selectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since its inception in the mid-1940s, the Moroccan feminist movement has evolved around the family law code. The post-independence family law denied the women basic rights, fuelling disappointment and anger among the female intellectual elite (journalists, writers, politicians and activists). Legal rights have always constituted a priority in Moroccan women's struggle for dignity in and outside home. These rights have become central to women's activism with their increasing access to education and the job market. Today, women's legal rights are associated with democratization and political openness. This paper addresses these issues and underlines the impact of the family law in generating and accelerating feminist ideas in Morocco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1960s and 1970s presented fertile soil for a number of anthropological theories in Morocco. Those theories tried to offer explanatory paradigms for societies that had just shaken off colonization, especially in Anglo-Saxon studies. Segmentary theory, as part of this tradition, should be understood within the dichotomy of continuity and rupture in theoretical contributions on Morocco; its roots derive from both Khaldunian and colonial thought. Ernest Gellner's work on theSaints of the Atlas(1969) is considered among the most interesting studies that applied segmentary theory to understand Moroccan society in the post-independence era. In fact, much criticism has been levelled at this theory from different researchers such as Jacque Berque, Paul Pascon, Abdelkbir Khatibi, Abdellah Hammoudi, Abdellah Laroui and Mokhtar Harras, among others. Criticism mainly focused on the ideological and ethnocentric background that frames the frozen starting arguments of the segmentary approach. It maintains that ‘pre-capitalist’ societies were static, had no history and could not produce but social orders and intellectual and economic institutions that exalt loyalty to community and the authority of customs and ancestry, while they lacked power centralization, would reproduce themselves routinely and statically as well as diminish the prospects of social change. This paper criticizes Gellner's segmentary theory for neglecting the role of kinship and blood ties, social stratification and chiefship, marginalizing socio-historical dynamics, and the overemphasizing of the pacific role of religion and saints. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Humania del Sur: Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos, Africanos y Asiáticos is the property of Humania del Sur. Estudios Latinoamericanos Africanos y Asiaticos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Under normal political conditions within modern capitalism migration fulfils a function of socio-economic regulation within local societies. Mobility develops as one of a number of social responses of particular populations as part of complex livelihood strategies. But migration and mobility are not open to everyone. The relationship of particular populations to national and international space is complex. Official approaches to migration in Morocco tend to consider the impacts of migration as 'statistical aggregates', abstract and detached from the local context and history of the group. The resulting vision of migration is usually either overly negative, associated with the misery it produces, such as rural exodus associated with growing urban poverty, or overly positive, focusing on international migration and remittances. This paper attempts to put migration in context, in the lives of the groups affected by the territorial reconfiguration and social reproduction provoked by migration. This more grounded anthropological approach enables us to see migration in relation to the weight of historical context and the mechanisms of social change which provoke migration and to which it contributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Clifford Geertz's thinking about cities and modernity in the Moroccan context. From the historian's perspective, Geertz made important contributions to the study of Moroccan urbanism. In his writing on Sefrou between the 1960s and the mid-1980s, he mapped out how material changes in the city accompanied an emerging sense of a localised urban consciousness. By asking the eternal question, 'For whom is the city made?' he showed that even in provincial Sefrou, the built environment could unexpectedly serve as a site for ideological and social confrontation and the working out of one group's desire for political domination over others. On the more theoretical level, his work on Sefrou also demonstrates how architects and builders could play roles as agents of change, while the buildings they created served as representations for wider shifts in the cultural and historical fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital revolution has drastically transformed the conventional system of political representation, participation and communication, bringing accordingly many cultural changes in the public sphere where collective action is built and new identity aspects are constructed. This article attempts to make sense of the February 20th movement youth activists' actions, understand their dynamics, analyse their mobilisation process, examine their paradoxes and highlight their promises from a social and political outlook. Youth activists in this movement used the internet as a tool to strategise, organise and mobilise supporters across the country to take the streets to demand for the democratisation of political institutions, lifting the veil on the dysfunctional and seriously out of touch political parties, more freedom of expression, more limits on the royal power and an end to corruption, nepotism and favouritism. To address this concern, a quantitative opinion survey was addressed to 100 activists in the February 20th movement in 2011 in three major cities in Morocco: Rabat, Casablanca and Meknes. The results obtained were significant with regard to gender participation in the movement, level of education, political affiliation and the use and manipulation of the Internet for political activism. Similarly, the manuscript shows that activists in the February 20th Movement have managed to transform the Moroccan society and changed the meaning of political participation and social debate in Morocco, altering, thus, Morocco's protest culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Hot Maroc (2016), Yassin Adnan, a Moroccan author and journalist, reconstructs through the literary fiction the political and social changes of contemporary Morocco, from the end of the reign of Hassan II until today. Through the eyes of the main character, Raḥḥāl, the reader discovers both the social jungle of Marrakesh and the digital Moroccan jungle in which the young man becomes a professional keyboard warrior. Being paid by Moroccan mukhabarat, Raḥḥāl manipulates public opinion through readers' comments published in an electronic journal, called Hot Maroc. The present study aims to analyse styles, registers, and linguistic variation through a sociolinguistic perspective. Although the main language of the novel is Fuṣḥā (here intended as Modern Standard Arabic), discursive parts make also use of Dāriǧa (Moroccan Arabic). The plurality of voices and linguistic diversity which emerge from online and offline discourses and interactions among characters is not limited to merely enhancing the novel's 'realism', but it makes it possible to analyse how the communicative nature of language is functionally manipulated to serve instead as an instrument of miscommunication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to cast light on one of Moroccan women's cinematic voices: Narjiss Nejjar. Thanks to her growing filmography, she is nowadays considered a promising member of women's film community in the country. Her debut feature film Al-Oyoun Al-Jaffa (Les Yeux Secs/Dry Eyes, Morocco and France, 2003) has been widely acclaimed. I argue that this work negotiates female spectatorship through two main strategies. First, it represents Amazigh (Berber) women as full-fledged citizens away from any process of eroticisation or fragmentation. Second, it pushes the spectators, male and female, to identify with the female characters through this counteractive strategy of representation. To identify with them, one has to identify with their journeys of becoming. The film will be closely investigated from a postcolonial vision, and read against the backdrop of political and social changes that have been animating the contemporary Moroccan society in the recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demonstrations by thousands of young people since 20 February 2011 have re-launched the debate on the position of the young and their social, economic and political conditions in Moroccan society. This article examines that position and these conditions, revealing a series of social changes that justify our speaking of the emergence of a new sociological generation. It also analyses the 20th February Movement, its nature, its limits and its achievements, as well as the Moroccan regime's responses to it. The conclusions are that the movement's demands represent the vanguard of the reformist agenda and are the tip of the iceberg of the changes experienced by young people. Thus it is possible that we can speak here about a new historical generation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article addresses the reform of the Moroccan Personal Status Code and its shortcomings. It argues that despite the success of the reform campaign, a number of problems prevent the new Family Code from having a proper and lasting effect on Moroccan society. The article explores these issues, which are of a legal as well as a social nature, and contends that in order for the reformed Code to be fully implemented and gender equality to be instituted in all spheres of public and private life, an all-encompassing economic and educational reform has to go hand in hand with social changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the situation of women in Moroccan society. From the viewpoint of social change as a multidimensional process, the main socio-demographic variables are discussed and the course of the pro-rights movement of women and the Family Code reform are examined. The authors find that although real progress has been made over the last 50 years, there is still much more to be achieved. Furthermore, there are indications that the incipient participation by women in the public sphere too often continues to reproduce schemes of subordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]